updated 12:48 pm EDT, Fri August 8, 2014

Site will eventually have nine buildings, solar farm

Apple is planning another expansion of its datacenter near Reno, Nevada, says local newspaper the Reno Gazette Journal, citing building permits filed with Washoe County. The new efforts will bring the total number of buildings to nine, including eight data clusters and an administrative center. "They just keep plugging along," says a senior planner for Washoe County, Trevor Lloyd. "Apple keeps submitting plans...and it looks like they'll be expanding for a long time."

The company is also said to be angling for a downtown Reno facility -- submitting plans for a site in the Tessera District -- but making no progress. "I haven't heard anything and, as far as I know, no one in the city has heard anything," says assistant city manager Bill Thomas. "I'm not saying we won't hear from them but it's been silence on their end (as of now)." Rather than data, downtown offices will handle "business and purchasing" tasks. Apple must build them in order to get up to $89 million in tax handouts.

Separately, a solar farm under construction will eventually produce between 18 and 20MW of power for the datacenter. The complex is currently dependent on geothermal energy, but more servers will stress that supply.